A whole week has passed since we stepped onto that plane home. Australia was a lovely holiday, Tanzania a surreal dream. Or is it actually this life back in the U.K. that is the dream.
I’ve succumbed to a head cold, and a morning on the sofa, though it could be man flu. Perhaps it is that inevitable come down of finding myself surrounded by bags waiting to divulge their contents of our red soil life, the mountain of washing with no helpful housekeeper to whisk it away and children needing to shed themselves of layers of emotion built up in the heat Africa.
M had his reverse culture shock first, struggling to join us on our hedonistic sugar and wine fuelled holiday down under. The rest of us are having moments, either those of a strange realisation that life here just carried on without us, or on filling the supermarket trolley finding just how difficult it is not to buy food wrapped in plastic.
Our time away has coincided with the unrest of Brexit, a slowly mounting world awakening to climate devastation and an increased awareness of what humans modern diet is doing to us and the world. Having finally completed Sapiens, I think I need to race on to his sequel to see if there’s a more uplifting summation of humankind and its future.
I went away searching to answer that midlife feeling of ‘what is it all about?’, discovered that family life and emotions don’t really change much when you transplant them to another country, and that my friends and patients in Tanzania all shared so much in essence to those back home.
I’ve soaked up the pleasure of familiar greetings, spring greenery on the school run, several cups of tea with those sorely missed ears who listen/shoulders to cry on/gossip sharers and delighted in a welcome home package from our village friends to greet us on our first day back.
Thank you for all the lovely messages welcoming us home....willl take me a while to catch up with dear friends...how lucky I am to have felt missed.
We have a move on the cards now that M has his job, so trying to enjoy the present moment without getting lost in the inevitable long lists that are building. At least I have another delaying tactic to the requests for new pets, having made the mistake of saying yes, when we get back from Africa!
So, we’re back......
Tuesday 30 April 2019
Tuesday 23 April 2019
We’re coming home
The journey home begins...all too smoothly perhaps, with the Mary Poppina like packing of the rental car with our additional passenger and suitcase. Perfect timing for a smooth check in....until we discovered that somehow, in the process of changing M’s tickets to get him home for his interview, his flight home from Australia had been cancelled. So it is with a wry smile that us girls once again board a long haul flight without him. We decided against the $8000 Aus dollar price tag for bringing him with us and instead left him with a ticket for the non stop flight from Perth to Heathrow tomorrow. He’s on standby for the flight today, which would ironically get him in to the U.K. 90mins before us!
This job interview certainly has to be up there in the ranks of most expensive interview travel costs! Thank goodness he got the job!
It’s been a whirlwind since M arrived 2 weeks ago with non stop playing for the girls, lots of fun sightseeing and a week in a beautiful beachside holiday house in the Margaret River region with our ever welcoming friends. No mean feat having another family staying in your home for 3 weeks and to still part on good terms. It will be a year or two until we see them again, safe in the knowledge that we’ll all just pick up where we left off.
The highlights; paddling with stingrays, quokka selfies, drinking water from taps, exploring ancient caves, tasting a large variety of grape products, hot showers, feeding kangaroos, eating kangaroos, hours of life reflections with a great friend, continuous electricity & WiFi, cards against humanity, Easter eggs & ice-creams, trying out the Australian tooth fairy, exploring a beautiful coastline......
What’s not to love about the climate, the lifestyle, the people.....WA has it all, especially with the added frisson of redback spiders in the shed, poisonous snakes in the sand dunes and the chance of a nibble from a passing great white shark!
We’ve had a wonderful time and though Africa now feels like a distant dream we’re all ready to make the shift into the new adventure of coming home.
See you soon!
Monday 8 April 2019
Down under
We have yet to see dawn in this Southerly land. Until this morning we have slept heavily, undisturbed by the preparations for work and school, going on in the house around us.
We emerged blinking from bingeing on plane movies and an endless round of food proffered at strange times of night and day. My biggest concern was Australian customs, sure with our port of embarkation being in the African continent, that I would be made to unpack the suitcases stuffed with military precision, and then fail to close them again. Going with 'honesty is the best policy', we threw away the remains of cashew nuts and biscuits, declared our shoes with remnants of red soil and the two wooden chicken purchased on route to Dar es Salaam airport. There was no box to tick to declare soft toys on which we are culturing rare microorganisms, so Gerry proffered his passport tentatively to ensure his legal entry. Amazingly we were allowed straight through....and yes folks, that's really all we had, the rest went home to the UK with M.
Perth was, perhaps, designed for us. A special holding point to reacclimatise to a sanitised version of the developed world. The roads so smooth we considered that our rental car may in fact be a hovercraft. Streets wide and empty, lined with enormous houses and green verges. Stretches of pristine white beach with lapping waves. Our dear, familiar friends to welcome us into their new life of outdoor living.
7 days since our departure from Tanzania and we have stopped hesitating to use the tap water to brush our teeth. A choice of lever on the fridge gives instant access to cool water or the satisfactory clunk of ice cubes. Milk and cereals for breakfast. A pool in the backyard. The climate may actually be perfection, though our first day included a trip to the shopping mall as my children, shivering, requested leggings and jumpers in the balmy Australian autumn. Even yesterday when the temperature climbed back up to almost 30c my eldest daughter resembled an American teenager huddled in a hoody and baseball cap! And, oh, my deepest fear, that after years of cold water swimming at the drop of a hat we should lose that ability. Warmest seas now at the end of a hot summer - if we had come from the UK, I suspect we would be relishing - but yes, we were that family whimpering, toe deep in the 'icy' Indian Ocean (22-24c).
We have been waiting with bated breath for the outcome of M's interview on Friday....perusing Perth real estate for plan C. Oh, so tempting, the enormous mansions with pools and marble flooring, ocean views and a lifestyle to match. Anyone with a basement London flat may want to check out what they can get this side of the world!
We have 2 weeks until we board our plane to return to 'life back home'. This may actually be the ultimate holiday - hanging out with one of your best friends, drinking her wine whilst her husband does your laundry and your children entertain each other. Don't worry Mr B, I promise to move out eventually...…...
We emerged blinking from bingeing on plane movies and an endless round of food proffered at strange times of night and day. My biggest concern was Australian customs, sure with our port of embarkation being in the African continent, that I would be made to unpack the suitcases stuffed with military precision, and then fail to close them again. Going with 'honesty is the best policy', we threw away the remains of cashew nuts and biscuits, declared our shoes with remnants of red soil and the two wooden chicken purchased on route to Dar es Salaam airport. There was no box to tick to declare soft toys on which we are culturing rare microorganisms, so Gerry proffered his passport tentatively to ensure his legal entry. Amazingly we were allowed straight through....and yes folks, that's really all we had, the rest went home to the UK with M.
Perth was, perhaps, designed for us. A special holding point to reacclimatise to a sanitised version of the developed world. The roads so smooth we considered that our rental car may in fact be a hovercraft. Streets wide and empty, lined with enormous houses and green verges. Stretches of pristine white beach with lapping waves. Our dear, familiar friends to welcome us into their new life of outdoor living.
7 days since our departure from Tanzania and we have stopped hesitating to use the tap water to brush our teeth. A choice of lever on the fridge gives instant access to cool water or the satisfactory clunk of ice cubes. Milk and cereals for breakfast. A pool in the backyard. The climate may actually be perfection, though our first day included a trip to the shopping mall as my children, shivering, requested leggings and jumpers in the balmy Australian autumn. Even yesterday when the temperature climbed back up to almost 30c my eldest daughter resembled an American teenager huddled in a hoody and baseball cap! And, oh, my deepest fear, that after years of cold water swimming at the drop of a hat we should lose that ability. Warmest seas now at the end of a hot summer - if we had come from the UK, I suspect we would be relishing - but yes, we were that family whimpering, toe deep in the 'icy' Indian Ocean (22-24c).
We have been waiting with bated breath for the outcome of M's interview on Friday....perusing Perth real estate for plan C. Oh, so tempting, the enormous mansions with pools and marble flooring, ocean views and a lifestyle to match. Anyone with a basement London flat may want to check out what they can get this side of the world!
We have 2 weeks until we board our plane to return to 'life back home'. This may actually be the ultimate holiday - hanging out with one of your best friends, drinking her wine whilst her husband does your laundry and your children entertain each other. Don't worry Mr B, I promise to move out eventually...…...
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